This CD/DVD buyer/seller functions as a mobile media vendor in this town outside of Yangon. Cellphone ownership and internet connectivity in the town is low compared to urban Yangon, but overall wealth is high enough to justify this woman’s services. Here, she’s pictured  with her “security detail”/assistant salespeople/customers, who perform equal parts advertising, buzz generation/marketing, and plot explanation of obscure movies (in return for the odd kung-fu film she lets them borrow) as she walks around this and surrounding towns. If a disc she purchases is too scratched to work, she hangs on to them to sell later to someone who wants to use them for their reflective properties by attaching them to their bicycle, vehicle, or fence, or to wire LED’s to them for the belief that a disc increases the LEDs’ brightness.

Seeing as this is her entire livelihood, this woman likely has a very keen understanding of her market’s relative awareness/acceptance of various aspects of Myanmar pop culture, and based upon her movie/music stocks and sales figures she can probably forecast with a good degree of accuracy the attributes of movies and songs that are most worth purchasing from families who are selling. As her inventory is limited to what she can carry in her bag, she must carefully apply her knowledge of how a successful/popular movie or album is treated/sold/resold/talked about when making the critical choice of what used media to buy from customers, which to carry with her (based upon the demographics of the community she is entering – age, wealth, etc.), and determining prices.